Landlord

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http://youtube.com/watch?v=vd-RZpKMbYQ

This is a live version of a track on an album, Into A Prism, which can be downloaded in full here: • https://davidrovics.bandcamp.com/albu... • It's also on the CD, If I Had A Hammer, which can be purchased on my estore: • http://www.theconnextion.com/davidrov... • From a live show in Belfast, recorded by Kate Mara of Reel News -- http://reelnews.co.uk/. Please consider supporting my work by going to http://davidrovics.com and clicking on the subscribe button! • Lyrics: • The patroons came from Holland to America, became landlords where none had been before • Soon one man owned half a million acres on both sides of the Hudson River shore • He invited families to move in and give him thirty percent • Of everything they grew each year, this is how they'd pay the rent • His name was Rensselaer, he became one of the richest men on Earth • In today's terms ninety billion dollars is how much he'd be worth • All this for doing nothing but saying all of this was his • I have the power of the state behind me and I'm in the landlord biz • After two hundred years of this and one revolution won • Another Rennsalaer had another son • And this Rennsalaer was greedier than his ancestors dead and passed • It was now the 1840's and things started changing fast • It was the straw that broke the back, the bottle was uncorked • They started organizing meetings, the tenant farmers of New York • They found the strength of numbers, they found the power of suggestion • They found each other asking the same question • Who gave you the right to be a landlord, to live a life of ease while others toil • Who gave you the right to be a rich man, while the rest of us pay you so that we can work this soil • They vowed that they would stop the rent collection, they vowed they'd bring this madness to an end • And when one blew the tin horn of distress, they'd soon find they had a thousand friends • Dressed in calico skirts with masks upon their faces, on horseback, armed with knives and guns • They chanted and they yelled, they kept their farms, and they kept the sheriffs on the run • They asked... • Chorus • The governor passed laws to try to stop them, but nothing could be done to break their will • And by 1848 the landlords buckled and sold their holdings to the farmers in the hills • Yes they overthrew this feudal system, but it's replaced now by speculators and banks • And you can still hear the homeless families asking of all the landed gentry in our ranks

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